


too full of holes

by CampionSayn



Series: briar studies [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Body horror (?), Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gen, Not Epilogue Compliant, everything after chapter 684 is TRASH, my headcanon is canon: this is fiction OF fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-12 19:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18017360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: Frankly, Chad was happy that Orihime wasn't in agonizing pain that was steadily growing as they all made it through the war, but goddamn it would be nice if people weren't so judgmental about what she had to do to get there.





	too full of holes

_Purple discoloration, like being beaten with a chair or punched repeatedly in a back alley._ _Thick, mottled veins that seemed to bubble grotesque and painful with pus filling wherever it could reach. Blood and vomit coating her chin and corners of her mouth from the moment Chad had woken Inoue in her bed and until Ishida's father had handed her a tissue beside her makeshift canvas bed in the ward of Fourth Division; nobody noticing them as he'd seen Chad enter and didn't want him waking up his son in the next room._  
  
It shouldn't have gone so far as to stop her breathing on one of the few nights where sleep came, but it _did_ and Chad felt more horrible than anything when Ishida Ryuuken had asked her how much aspirin she had been taking, when she had started to have numbness in her arms and hands, how much pain she had been in that it would keep her up for days at a time and when it had started to depress her breathing and caused her to cry.  
  
"Ah," she'd been hesitant, still with that oxygen mask strapped to her face and holding weakly to Chad's hand _(she was so cold)_ with trembling fingers, "I think...about the time just after I got back from Hueco Mundo...the first time..."  
  
Chad felt himself shake at the thought, remembering the lunches they sometimes shared, dinners as well, where he'd seen her drawers filled with old bottles for aspirin and heating pads right next to her cooking utensils and merely brushed it off as one of those things Inoue kept around because of the kind of battles they went into. He'd thought she kept them for other people like himself, Ishida, Ichigo, Tatsuki sometimes as well. He'd never dreamed she'd be hurting that much and not tell someone.  
  
Ryuuken-sensei landed another blow to Chad's fears for Inoue when he stated, almost kindly because somewhere in him recognized that his son cared about this girl and this boy and this was a rare thing not to take lightly or be cruel over; that she would need emergency surgery to remove the toxic abscesses and the excess breast tissue invading her and weighing her down at the same time.  
  
This was not a joke.  
  
They had to leave through a portal only Ryuuken and Isshin knew about, taking leave without anyone knowing or noticing, and Chad's ears buzzing with the realization that Ryuuken was taking them to his hospital and he'd have to do the procedure.  
  
Chad had to pick her up and did his best to pretend her breathing wasn't so labored and she didn't seem so light in his arms--like a skeleton, or dried out scarecrow.

* * *

_[help help help! hime isn't breathing! we can't wake her up! fucking help her help her help her--!]_  
  
The literature for the operation Inoue had to undergo did little to stunt the repeat and rewind of Tsubaki and Shun'ou hissing and screaming in his ear in his memory of the hours previous, but it did help. In a morbid and horribly unsatisfying way, it helped.  
  
He didn't think there was anyone he could call for Inoue except for Tatsuki, and perhaps Keigo with Mizuiro tagging along if he had no guests for the early morning to kick out of his bed. He didn't think he should call, anyway, not yet, not until the surgery was over and Inoue was out of the most obvious danger of her abscesses infecting her blood or throwing a clot or _(and here a little part of him became hysterical and he had to just drop the papers to the ground and keep his hands to himself so he wouldn't squeeze and break anything)_ some sort of aneurysm manifesting and reaching her brain at lightning speed to kill her.  
  
The girl could fight Hollows, Fullbringers, Quincy and whatever else thrown her way for the sake of her friends... and she might die on a table because her own body could rebel against her in a manic blink.  
  
Chad sighed and leaned back into his crappy hospital waiting room seat, sinking so his legs spread along the floor and the back of his head thunked against the wall.  
  
The clock in the nursing station couldn't even take his mind off of things with clicking. All was silent so early in the morning.  
  
He breathed and tried not to flinch as Inoue's hair clips wriggling in the pocket at his hip. Soft heat and frigid cold and no difficulty at all in guessing which belonged to which when Tsubaki had been terrified earlier, Shun'ou had been angry and the other four were just hoping for the best.

* * *

_"Twenty-seven pounds of extra," she breathed, looking up at the ceiling and not at Chad as he was finally allowed to enter her room with all its machines hooked up to her and the thick blankets kept at her waistline and far away from the red tinted bandages laid over her much-much-much smaller chest so nothing got messed up and infected._  
  
_It didn't look like she'd ever pressed the button for morphine, she was shining under the early morning rays of sunlight from so much sweat while still looking so pale..._  
  
_He wandered over to search both sides of the bed and picked up the button for her medication, tucking it into her hand very pointedly before yanking over a side chair so he could hold her other hand._

* * *

  
Cellphones didn't work in the spirit world, this is something that everyone among them knew, but word of mouth is a powerful thing, so Chad and Orihime didn't get to sleep for more than four hours _(well after the nursing staff had checked on them three times already to give Chad a pillow so he wasn't in that place of the most ungodly uncomfortable, lower the shades and check their patient to make sure she was clotting properly)_ before the window was knocked open and the first of the worried people arrived.  
  
Though...the individuals in particular that were first on the scene were unexpected.  
  
Chad had to pull himself up and lock the door so the nurses didn't think they were talking to thin air as the high pitched voices woke Orihime before their reitsu--very different from shinigami--did.  
  
Grimmjow and Urahara, Nel, Loly and Menoly; not at all who Chad would have expected to visit, but the three girls made an immediate beeline for the patient, spouting worries and hissing curses and giving compliments; Urahara taking the distraction to whisper to Chad that their nakama were still heavily occupied with the Gotei asking for assistance and advice and, "They'll get here if they get the chance, but I wouldn't hold my breath since Ichigo still doesn't seem to possess the ability to say no to people in trouble."  
  
"Fuckin' dumbass," Grimmjow sulked, leaning against the wall and pretending not to observe Nel with a close eye so she didn't pull at those wires and cords attached the Inoue that he had no idea about, but was aware they were probably important.  
  
Loly and Menoly showed up because when Uruhara had been called on by Ichigo to please go and check on Orihime, the man had been in Hueco Mundo helping Grimmjow and Nel return Harribel from her Quincy prison--checking her wounds and giving her some meds for a pick-me-up and the like--and had insisted on going.  
  
Urahara hadn't been too keen on the idea of these particular Arrancar going with him to the human world, but Loly had spat insults and threats his way while blocking his exit and Menoly had been rather insistent that they technically owed Orihime a considerable debt after all of her help; so in the end Urahara had been moved by the chance at whatever amusement the women would bring with them.  
  
Chad was too tired to scold him, so he returned to his seat and allowed them all to stay and talk until it was clear Orihime should have pressed that button for morphine after thirty minutes, pressed it for her and asked them all to leave so they could sleep, "Please."

* * *

  
  
"Please tell me Inoue-san isn't hugging my father. I'm hallucinating and just need to eat and rest and blink and this won't be happening."  
  
Ichigo squinted, equally uncomfortable as his own father was laughing like a donkey and in turn got a punch to the face from the elder Ishida when Orihime put him down from lifting him off the ground like he weighed no more than a toddler.  
  
Chad remained three feet behind her and, on turning his head to see both Ichigo and Uryuu looking a little green, gave a little wave.  
  
"I wish I could."  
  
After a promise that Inoue would not be doing hard manual labor for the shinigami and would not put strain on her stitches and would take a shower only with someone in the room with her so there wasn't a chance she might have a dizzy spell and hit her head and die, she and Chad had made their way back to the spirit world to find their nakama, plus Ryuuken and Isshin waiting for them.  
  
Ryuuken still wasn't pleased that she'd ducked out of the hospital a week early, but the hug had put him so off balance that he didn't remember to tell her that, _again_ , before she'd gone to work with her fairies.  
  
Healing people that had been brought into the barracks that the other healers weren't sure about treating such as Bazz-B and Jugram Haschwalth _(Chad's idea when Ishida had told the others about Yhwach sacrificing his right hand man for his power; if Orihime could bring back those sacrifices, then Yhwach couldn't get their power because it was rejecting a choice of the past, and with Uryuu's power of trade between two points it was also a rewriting of a future Yhwach couldn't see; following through with Renji  and Chad playing distraction for Uryuu to launch that silver arrow, Ichigo tearing into the would-be god no fewer than three times and Rukia freezing him in his own personal glacier--well, they might still need to bring back the Soul King, but for now they'd be fine)_.  
  
Rejecting something like Komamura's loss of werewolf form _(he'd been willing to live out his life as just an especially large wolf without speech, but Iba had gone to Inoue and **begged** )_ so he could return as a captain and lead his division through the rebuilding process.  
  
Tearing down the after effects of Yhwach's tampering with the energy and ebb of the buildings that he'd meddled with to create his own preferred image of things that were, only to give back what had stood before _(Tsubaki was pleased enough, but hearing the fairy cackle would never **not** be creepy)_.  
  
All of this and Chad was never more than a few yards away at any given time, punching here and there as directed to help people see into damaged buildings; bringing things from point A to point B with some of the smaller shinigami skittering around him like he was one of the giants that guarded the city gates; taking breaks here and there to make sure stitches weren't seeping blood _(Ryuuken was always busy, and Tsubaki had hissed and struck sharp toes atop brown hair the first time Chad hesitated, "You've both been vulnerable with each other, she trusts you,")_ and happy to help in any way.  
  
Though he could have done without hearing things like "what a waste" and "a shame" within ear shot where he _knew_ Inoue could hear it too.   
  
It got cut off by about ninety percent when some insufferable idiot from eleventh division thanked Orihime for her help, followed quickly by taking note of her smaller figure and a snub about plastic surgery in the aftermath of a war, which was followed swiftly and surely by Chad picking the moron up and tossing him through the atmosphere.   
  
They guy landed face first into a wall and Zaraki received a complaint in writing about the man within the same fifteen minutes--and it was the best Chad had felt about something in weeks.  
  
The soft scolding with a shining smile from Orihime was well worth it, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for (largely) two reasons: 1) I love and adore each and every person than reviewed my last Chadhime fic and 2) I asked for advice on a Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt from a friend who said "real world problems have no place in a hyper-shounen fantasy series like Bleach."
> 
> ...Hah. Hahaa-haaa. Bitch, please.
> 
> I have no intent or reason to push this further than being a dinky one-shot to appease myself out of spite. Even if by some miracle people end up reading it and liking it, I didn't really have an exit strategy to speak of. 
> 
> Review if you liked it though; I'm always pleased to have even minor opinions on these things I churn out when nobody's looking.


End file.
